Date of Observation: 01/24/2021
Name: Evan Ross
Zone: Northwest Mountains
Elevation: 9,500-12,000
Avalanches: 1 small storm slab from Saturday 1/24. North aspect at 10,000ft.
Weather: Overcast. Pulses of snow, ramping up the most in the afternoon. Picked up 3 to 4″ of new snow today.
Snowpack: Traveled through lots of terrain, but mostly lower angled slopes. Not much for red flags until we were riding slopes in the low 30-degree range on E, SW and W aspects between 11,000-12,000ft. Farther running shooting cracks in this terrain make it clear that we didn’t want to travel on anything big or much steeper. These slopes were upper BTL and NTL type terrain and didn’t have recent wind-loading.
- Small storm slab avalanche from 1/23. North Aspect 10,000ft.
- Deep, soft drifts. NTL near Scarps Ridge.
- Very quick hasty pit after triggering long-running shooting cracks. Low 30 degree W facing terrain at 11,600ft. Cracks were propagating on the F hard facets near the ground.